1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method, apparatus and system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, with the advent of ever more powerful computers and video games consoles, computer games are starting to incorporate augmented reality images in which images captured by a camera are combined with computer generated images so as to produce a content-rich media experience for a user.
Additionally, with increasingly powerful image processing techniques, added functionality between a user and an entertainment device may by provided by the use of a camera to capture images of a user. In particular, some systems allow a user to draw a user drawn image on a suitable drawing surface so that the camera can capture an image of the user drawn image. The entertainment device can then carry out image processing on the captured image so that the user drawn image can be included in a game. Other image processing operations can then be applied to the user drawn image so as to provide an enhanced gaming experience for the user.
However, in order to provide this functionality, the entertainment device should be able to generate a digital representation of the user drawn image. One way to achieve this would be to generate bitmap data from the user drawn image which corresponds to the user drawn image. However, it may be difficult to isolate the user drawn image from the background, or from the drawing surface, which may lead to an appearance that the user drawn image has just been “stuck on” to the computer generated image or augmented reality image. Furthermore, if other image operations such as image scaling is carried out on bitmap data, the image quality may be degraded, especially if the user drawn image is enlarged.
The present invention seeks to alleviate or mitigate the above problems.